Sometimes I just get the feeling that I do not want to do this fighting for independence thing anymore.
This happens to me when people allegedly on the same side as me say or do idiotic things or actually are doing nothing at all except moaning and groaning.
These are also usually the same people that never attend branch meetings and are always too busy to do any leafleting or door knocking.
Whatever you do, don’t ask them to help with a street stall or fund raise for the Branch.
They can’t sell the raffle tickets at their work because everyone is a unionist.
They do nothing, however they can tell you everything that is wrong with the SNP, Greens and YES Movement.
They have an opinion on everything and a desire to do nothing actively about it.
The pure mince and lies the unionists spew daily actually makes me more determined to stay the course.
The Unionists and their House-Jocks are too thick to realise their SNP Bad, No Referendum keech is not helping them one iota.
They actually harden the resolve of the independence movement and drive more people to the cause with their inane drivel, lies, smears, and stupidity.
Post independence it would not surprise me in the least if Nicola at a special conference has a roll call of our SNP ‘Sleepers in the Union.’
To a roll of drums with Caledonia belting out the speakers SNP Secret Sleeper Agents, Fluffy Mundell, Jim Murphy, James Kelly MSP, Iain Gray, Ross Thomson, Alex Cole-Hamilton, Kirstene Hair, Myles Briggs, Dick Leonard, Willie Rennie, Jackie Baillie, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, the entire staff of the Scotsman, The Herald and of course Jackie Bird enter the auditorium to thunderous applause.
These people have done more to further the cause of Scottish Independence than even, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, Winnie Ewing, Dr Robert McIntyre, Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon et al.
Not forgetting of course a special mention to all the teachers at Eton, Fettes and Charterhouse Schools that managed to turn out so many complete and utter fannies for the union cause.
Earlier today somebody posted a list of medicines and treatments that will no longer be available from NHS England.
The items on the list are themselves not really controversial there are lots of everyday things most of us would not go to the doctor about or expect a prescription for either.
There are some people in society though that will be affected by this latest Tory attack.
Try and guess if it will be the rich, the poor or the in-betweeners?
There are a few things on this list I would suggest that should be discussed with a health professional, not things we should self-diagnose and attempt to treat ourselves.
Likewise I think there are certain medicines doctors should have discretion upon.
There are many small clues and symptoms during a consultation that lead doctors to their diagnosis.
During a routine consultation a doctor from observing diverse things such as your eyes, finger nails hair, breath, breathing can lead him to a more serious condition than the one you are presenting.
We all know when we have our eyes tested it is not just to see how far or how near sighted we are that the optician can diagnose.
High blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune disease, even some cancers can be detected by your optician during a routine eye test.
So many things are interlinked that can direct a health professional to a conclusion.
What we think is ‘just a sore back or a slight cough that won’t go away’ can be signs of something far more serious.
When we start going down the self-diagnosing and treating road, it is only going to lead to bad outcomes, not improved healthcare.
Setting all this aside and acknowledging this is not YET applicable to Scotland’s NHS one has to ask why is this being done and why now?
I have personally reached the conclusion that it is just another tiny part of the English NHS that the Tories have managed to prepare for privatisation.
This is the slow and relentless drive to ready the English public for the ending of universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery.
This is part of the preparations to enable the American Healthcare Companies to swoop down and turn the NHS England into a profit centre for the elite as soon as Brexit is completed.
It starts out with you buying your Calpol and aspirin for the weans cold and ends with you paying £10s of thousands to have a child in the first place.
It means that the spivs in the City of London sell you very expensive health insurance for you and your family.
In the US According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, the average American household spent $4,928 on health care in 2017 8% of the median income.
The average Gross wage in Scotland is £22,918 so approx £1,833 of your wages pa would get you a bog standard healthcare insurance.
Not a top of the range, every base covered insurance that will only be for those that can afford it and that is not any of us on average, part-time or low pay jobs.
We are talking a third party fire and theft type health policy not fully comprehensive.
There are no upsides to this plan, well not for us there isn’t.
The elite, spivs, bankers and financiers will do great out of it, you won’t!
Do not think for a second the government will stop taking NI deductions from your salary after there is no NHS or Social Security.
Once a government has a tax, they don’t tend to give it up.
William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax 1796 it was supposedly till the war with France was over then it would stop, and here we are today still paying income tax.
VAT was introduced in 1973 to pay our EU contributions anyone who thinks post Brexit VAT will vanish I have some magic beans here with your name on them.
The scariest thing on researching health insurance in America is the amount of people that have no cover at all.
The number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 7 million since President Donald Trump took office, new Gallup data released Wednesday shows. The country’s uninsured rate has steadily ticked upward since 2016, rising from a low of 10.9 percent in late 2016 to 13.7 percent — a four-year high.Jan 23, 2019.
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/23/18194228/trump-uninsured-rate-obamacare-medicaid
There is no reason to suspect that the numbers in the UK would be any less or better in a right wing UK, meaning around 8.9 million people today in UK would have no health cover.
The number in Scotland would be approximately 712,000 Scots with no health cover.
Putting this into some perspective, the entire population of Edinburgh is 482,00, Glasgow 598,830.
This is why today I took to social media to hopefully warn, alert and awaken feelings of outrage among the people of Scotland and throughout the UK.
I wrongly presumed most people would be as concerned as me about this latest attack on the English NHS.
The reaction I got from many was one of ‘’I always buy these products over the counter”
’I agree with this….. I tend treat those things myself.’
People trying to make themselves seem like ‘good people’ by either declaring agreement with this move or extolling the sense of it, trying to show they were not ‘taking advantage’ of the NHS.
The just getting by and ‘comfortable’ forgetting the millions living in poverty and just surviving.
The UK Media have done a magnificent job conditioning the people of the UK into acceptance of anything the elite deem necessary.
So many people unable or unwilling to see the dangers of this move in England by the Tories.
The ‘I’m Alright Jack’ mentality of some angers and saddens me greatly.
Today England’s NHS, tomorrow or perhaps 1st November, could easily be SNHS.
Someone even told me I picked the wrong story to get angry about today because this was only about England’s NHS, not Scotland’s NHS, didn’t I realise that in Scotland there are no prescription charges?😦😦😦😦😦😦
No frankly I am being stupid, how silly of me to think that these things could be transposed to Scotland!!
How ridiculous of me to think about those that already cannot afford to feed their families, where every penny is a prisoner.
How senseless of me to spare a thought for someone maybe just not as smart that doesn’t know the difference between a ‘minor burn or scald and a severe burn.
Someone that cannot tell the difference between heartburn and mild heart attack.
That 89p for the packet of aspirin might help stave off the strokes but it means no food tonight!
The ones that angered me today that are too stupid to realise most people are only a few salaries away from penury and that they too could easily become ‘most people!’
The austerity policies already in place in the UK have been condemned by the UN, not once but twice!
A report showed that over 120,000 people died either prematurely or unnecessarily because of Tory Austerity Policies.
The figures for suicides due to austerity have been locked away in ‘State Security’ mumbo jumbo, not accessible even by FOI requests.
Still the people remain in a docile state and seem very happy to be there.
So many people today told me I was being stupid to even concern myself with this story from England.
As soon as Brexit is confirmed, be assured they are coming for our Parliament, our democracy, our NHS, our pensions, our social security, our water and all we have is it seems is ambivalence.
Where is the anger, the indignation, a little annoyance?
Too many are content as long as they have Love Island, X Factor, the new football season and a fortnight in Majorca coming up.
It reminds me of the scene in Jaws where Roy Scheider the cop is trying to convince the town mayor to close the beach and warn the people about the killer shark in the water.
The Mayor talks to him as if he is the stupid one!
That is why today I am asking myself, why the @@@@ do I even bother or care?
Maybe we should all just keep quiet and let the sharks eat a few and see if that brings a bit of urgency and reality to the complacent!
Meantime I despair.
Again you hit the nail on the head, why can so many not see that our Devolved Parliament is very close to being taken away by the WM tories to preserve the union. Brexshite will destroy Scotland much worse than Thatcher did in her days of asset stripping. I’m so glad that some SNP politicians have come out and said they will bring a motion forward to conference in October that if we don’t get S30 approval that at the next WM or Holyrood elections if a majority of SNP are returned its a mandate to hold Indy talks I’m all for that stuff S30 approval.
As usual Roddy you’ve hit thail fairy and squarely on the head.
I agree entirely with you that there is far too much reticence amongst many people in thinking that Brexit and its many nefarious effects.
Apart from the normal insouciance of people who because they have been used to prosperity they assume that things will always be so easy. Of course, in Scotland we are further handicapped by the sheer number of House-Jocks in our own country who for various reasons are loath to acknowledge the baneful effects of Brexit.
Nicola needs to be ready and not wait too long. Bojo will have us and serve our NHS on a plate to trump, be sure of that. People need to wake up and see the future that is planned for them. I’m alright jack won’t cut it. Don’t despair, keep banging the drum please.
The sharks have been eating for a while now. Its just not in the news.
Ohhhh I so agree with you, BB!! I get sooo dispirited with the attitude of some people in UK and like you, today I was all for throwing in the towel & saying ‘let the chips fall where they may’. People in Scotland have been soooo cushioned by Scotparl’s attempts to shield them from the horrors of WM policies in effect in England that so many of Scots are now simply apathetic about the effects of tory policy or brexit. They don’t know and furthermore, they DON’T WANT to know, they’re bored of it all and they don’t really care but – well, Scotgov will make sure we don’t suffer any of the problems brexit will bring.
Your example of the NHS is a good one. Many Scots know prescriptions are free, they can get appointments with their doctors without having to wait too long and their A&E is working well, with not much of a wait! So… no probs here!! UNFORTUNATELY, so many just aren’t aware – what the ENGLISH NHS loses in funding, SO TOO WILL SCOTLAND!! When the English NHS is sold and WM no longer has to invest large amounts of funding to keep it viable, SCOTLAND WILL NOT GET THAT FUNDING EITHER!! So WHERE WILL WE GET IT??? If we want to keep the free prescriptions, good Dr appointments, A&E & hospital treatment – then something else will have to go! Will it be poor education? Less for Councils?? Parking payments everywhere? Well… those same people who find politics boring will be in for a shock & they’ll have to make hard decisions!!
I know here in Angus our Council is controlled by a Rainbow Alliance.The SNP won many places on the council but it’s the unionist parties that banded together to decide policy. When something is decided, like parking fees, local people are blaming SNP ‘because they voted for them & they won many of the seats!’ But they are darn sure they’re not voting for them again, after the chaos of the parking thing!! I don’t know HOW MANY times I’ve had to enter an argument on Facebook that I didn’t want to enter, to make it clear about the Rainbow Alliance who has control of the council!! People are astonished when I tell them!! They are honest to goodness ASTOUNDED! And had NO IDEA that the Council was run by the tories, labour & libdems! I don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to shout, ‘Open yer eyes! TAKE AN INTEREST IN WHO CONTROLS YOUR LIFE!” I know I’d lose friends – and be wasting my breath! Thankfully, after awhile, I can’t stand the nonsense I see being spouted about ‘that damn SNP Council’ and jump in again with both feet…
Back to YOUR POINT – I hear ye!! *knocking head on desk…*
Keep fighting the good fight man, we need every pro Indy voice to point all this out, over and over again, if we don’t, too many “I don’t do politics” types will sleepwalk into the situation that you worry about. You only have to look at YouTube, to see how terrible it is for the poor in the USA, to see where we would very quickly be! Power to your pen brother!
No it’s not just you Roddie,
I was one once of the people you talk about, politics was a complete turn off, even when the referendum kicked off I couldn’t have cared less, apart from anything else I never believed for one minute my fellow Scots would go for it, what was the point. nonetheless we came close (that is if you believe the result)
But although I’ve always been a supporter of independence, like many Scots I believed the too wee too poor too stupid thing but it never stopped me wanting independence for my country and it never stopped me voting for the SNP at every election.
I never really cared about economics I just never understood why we were governed by what was to me a foreign country, we may have been poorer but at least we could hold our heads up. far better man than us gave their lives for this wee bit hill and glen, what right have we to sell it for a bit of wealth.
It wasn’t until I read the Wee Blue Book I realised we weren’t too wee or too poor (the jurys out on the too stupid thing) and although we didn’t win in 2014 it got me interested and it got me angry.
I couldn’t care less about the latest signing for Arsenal or Chelsea or who wins the Xfactor or the Great British Bake Off none of these thing mean anything to me or will make one iota of difference my life or more importantly the lives of my children & grand-children,
For me independence is about them and releasing them from the tyranny we’ve had to endure all our lives hopefully for not much longer.
Indyref2 is the last helicopter out of Saigon and if we don’t jump onboard we really are too stupid,
Graeme